Our day started super early as we had to be at the autists’ school at 8 am. Standing in front of the door, we wondered if this would proof our idea of Mexican reliability to be true or false. Would they arrive an hour late and without having bought our material?
Exactly the opposite was the case. The door opened and we were professionally welcomed by the manager, every single item of our material list was there and we could start without any delays. At half past 9, the outlines of our mural painting were done and we had time for a coffee before our driver Toño came to pick us up for our next plan.
We drove 1.5 hours through and out of this enourmous city to the pyramids of Teotihuacan. The landscape changed from pure city panorama with lots of traffic to periferic neighborhoods with colorful houses to poor regions with favelas and more green to flat corn fields with green hills in the distance.
We had some quick food in front of the pyramids and entered around 2 . The place was crowded with tourists that were going up the azthekan pyramids like us. However, all of them were Mexicans. This reflects the sensation of the last days around DF; we have maybe seen 3 or 4 white people since we got here, and have been generally surrounded by 100% locals.
The Azthek Teotihuacan complex consists of the big pyramid/Temple of the sun and the pyramid of the moon, connected by the Allee of the dead and many smaller temples with some pretty well preserved mural paintings and constructions. It was very hot as there was only stone and dust in the middle of nowhere without any shade but we were lucky to have some clouds covering the sun every once in a while. We went up both of the pyramids and enjoyed the views over the impressive temple complex and the surrounding landscape. We bought some handmade whistles to imitate the sounds of pumas and eagles and sat down on top of a smaller pyramid to enjoy the place’s vibes before we finished our visit at almost 5.
Another round of freshly cut mangos brought back our energy before we started our way back to DF. The fruit we can buy next to the roads around here are absolutely incredible. Even the best mango you can possible imagine to find in Europe, is nothing compared to what we get here. Perfectly ripe, deep orange, soft and sweet mangos are freshly cut into plastic cups on the side of the road. One entire mango fits into one cup and costs 20 pesos, which is 1€.
We had been driven to the temples by our personal driver Toño (a friend of the family) who also had spent the whole day including lunch and visit with us and is very nice and funny. He drove us back to the city where we arrived at half past 6. I passed by a supermarket to get some meat and afterwards we met up at home to plan our next steps.
Planning with the group is a little terrifying. It took us 3 hours to decide on a flight to Oaxaca on Tuesday and there is the eternal fight between people who would like to take nightbuses and people who would like to take the general advice seriously NOT to go by nightbus because they get assaulted regularly by Narcos and other criminal gangs.
I suppose compromises and discussions will mark this journey and find this relatively tiring.
When we finally had a flight to our next destination and a place to stay there, it was almost 9 and we went out to the main square of this neighborhood, Coyoacán. As today was Saturday night, the square was packed with people and something like a fare was going on. Food stands, people selling stuff, music, dance, decorations, lights, colors, sounds, smells… Intense as always and extremely authentic. And, also as always, the secure feeling that no tourist will ever find their way here.
After a while of walking through the “action”, we sat down for dinner together with Esmeralda’s mum and a friend of here and stayed there until 12.
One Comment
Daumiboy
Da das meinte ich neulich. Auf Mexico City 2 folgt Mexico DF 2. Aber ich glaube sonst stimmt alles.